Facebook has redesigned its data center: here's what you can learn

Facebook has just launched a new data center architecture for Facebook called data center fabric. Najam Ahmad explained why

Facebook has just launched a new architecture of the Facebook data center network called data center fabric. Engineer Najam Ahmad, head of the network, explained why Facebook's efforts. These are important reflections for all those who have a datacenter or who manage one

Maximize data center spaceSwitch from a group of servers to a core-and-pod approach that allows for more bandwidth between machines. The server groups worked well for a while, explained Ahmad, but they had size limits. Fabric designed to be able to deploy all the units (pods) you want. Each pod is a calculation unit, without server groups linked to it; You can add pods until you finish the physical space in the data center or the energy. The equally important energy consumption of space: We measure the capacity of a data center in terms of megawatts, explained Ahmad.

Drag the vendor networkAlthough Facebook has already decided how data centers will work and be managed (through a SDN – Software-defined Network approach – against the traditional hardware-based approach), Ahmad said they are talking to vendors and there will always be space for products that can be combined with this modern and modular vision. We don't want to build traditional networks, we want to follow the SDN philosophy and vendors will be part of the system. Fabric allows you to use different solutions from different suppliers. Does not exclude anyone.

Network, infrastructure and better applicationsIn addition to allowing better space management, Ahmad explained that this project will facilitate the creation of better applications: applications and developers are the target of this new design. Today some applications found some limitations in the network. We want to remove these constraints, improve the performance of individual units and machines and bring developers to open up new scenarios, Ahmad said.